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David

Americans have been rightly frustrated by the slow, clumsy response to the Gulf oil spill by both BP and the government. But there is another side to the story: that told by civil servants working nonstop in the Gulf who don’t have the tools they need. I recently had the experience of working with many of these federal and state first-responders through an executive-education program at Harvard focusing on disaster preparedness.

What I found was a group of people who are highly professional and care deeply about their performance but are ensnared in a governmental system that is hopelessly entangled and desperately needs fixing. “We know that we are performing far below effectiveness in the Gulf,” one exhausted man lamented. But given what we are facing, others asked, what can we do?

The inescapable conclusion, at least to me, is to create a command structure for disaster response modeled on the military. Through harsh experience stretching back to Pearl Harbor, our military has erected a strong command and control structure across military branches. It invests heavily in the training and equipment of its response teams and practices regularly for a wide array of worst-case scenarios. Its capacity to overcome a crisis is unparalleled.

Alas, those of us who battle against natural disasters—people in Homeland Security, FEMA, the Coast Guard, the Centers for Disease Control, etc.—don’t come close. Laws and regulations patched together over the years have given large, often vague and confusing responsibilities to too many players, starting with the feds but also state and local officials and, in some cases, corporations like BP. The result is a chain of command clogged with uncertainty and delays. President Obama has insisted that he is in charge in the Gulf—and to his credit, he is forcing BP to cough up $20 billion—but too often, BP has appeared at the wheel as Washington rides shotgun. Meanwhile, state and local officials claim the feds are mired in bureaucratic red tape. The feds say that those folks, while often helpful, fight against each other over who comes first and that some grandstand for cameras. This is a witches’ brew.

In simpler times, we didn’t need to worry so much about disasters on the domestic front. But for reasons no one fully understands, times have become more dangerous. It is estimated that of the 20 costliest catastrophes in the world over the past four decades, half have occurred in the past decade alone—and no less than 13 of the world’s total have been in the U.S. It is also estimated that 91% of Americans now live in places with moderate-to-high risk of a natural disaster or terrorist attack.

We have made progress in handling smaller-scale incidents—witness the response to flooding in Nashville this spring—but we must develop a capacity for urgent, effective action against big ones.

First and foremost, we need to disentangle the messy laws and regulations that now exist, setting up a clear command structure for major disasters which is under federal leadership. Sure, we should leave prime responsibility under state and local control if the crisis can be contained; and sure, if a company such as BP causes the problem and can fix it, leave prime responsibility to it. But if a crisis mushrooms—as the oil spill did—the federal government must take decisive command. Never again should the country’s fate rest with a corporation. Just as we now look to Gen. David Petraeus in Afghanistan, we must have his clone taking charge in a domestic crisis, knocking heads and mobilizing the full resources of the nation for immediate action.

Once we have good plans in place, we must invest far more in leadership training for first-responders. We must make sure they have all the resources and practice they need. After that, we must unleash them to attack a crisis with full force and authority. To paraphrase Winston Churchill in World War II, let us give them the tools they need so they can finish the job.

David Gergen is a professor of public service at Harvard and a senior political analyst at CNN. He serves on the board of Teach for America and has advised four Presidents.

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